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Ten
minutes after the medic removed the wide-gauge needle from my arm, I was
stamping on the pedals, surging away from the clinic through rush hour traffic
– head held high. The fresh, bloody, track mark on the inside of my elbow was
concealed by a strip of medical tape and a plaster. But I was making no attempt
to hide the fact that my inner arm had recently received a jab. This is
not a stark, Armstrong-esque, confession. I’m no amateur blood doper. I’m
certainly not a pro cyclist! In truth,
I’d just spent an hour and a half at the NHS Donor
Centre, at St George’s Hospital, in Tooting, south London, while a very
large needle, drew out and returned, small quantities of blood.

No hiding
on the floor of a team coach for me. In plain sight, I’d been hooked up to an
apheresis machine which separated platelets from the rest of my blood – aptly
enough, by spinning it - before pumping what remained back into my body. This
process is repeated, over an hour or more (typically 90 minutes in my …

Nothing beats cycling round south west London’s Richmond Park. I commute through it twice a day at all hours. We take our nephew and niece there for two-wheeled adventures. And we spin round its perimeter with hundreds of other Lycra wannabes whenever we can spare the time.

Anyone with two wheels in west London knows
about the park. It's a splash of cool green in the middle of suburban concrete.